What does $10,000 buy in San Francisco?
PAUL BOUTIN - San Francisco's city attorney is investigating more than $10,000 paid retroactively to Ruby Rippey-Tourk, mayor Gavin Newsom's former appointments secretary and mistress. Rippey-Tourk "received more than $10,000 in sick pay while undergoing substance abuse treatment after she left City Hall," according to an AP report. Ten grand makes a scary headline in Fargo,Visto gets troll-power cash infusion
E-mail mobilizer Visto suddenly goes ahead with a formal announcement of Altitude Capital's (previously secret-ish) $35 million investment in the company. A reader asks:Why should Visto be shy about taking money from a hedge fund that funds patent lawsuits? Maybe they don't want to be seen as moving from 'litigious startup' to 'patent troll'. Personally I like trolls but not eve
The rise of the "enthusiast evangelist"
Jupiter Research's Michael Gartenberg will be hopping over to Microsoft, a la Jon Udell, to serve as an "enthusiast evangelist." Whatever you think of the credibility issues such positions create, it's not like this is a new phenomenon. All you really have is a publi20 steps to build your own video-sharing network
So you want to build a video sharing network? Of course you do. Fortunately, it's really easy to launch an awesome and successful video-sharing site these days. A highly placed but necessarily anonymous Internet superstar shares with us the ultimate plan for video fortune. Just follow these 20 simple steps, and you'll be kitting out your own fleet of Gulfstreams in no time.Step 1. Never forget: If Xeni Jardin uploads videos of herself to Boing Boing with the logo of your company next to the "play" button, you're going to be rich.
Step 2.<
Church of Scientology in Second Life
FACT: Despite speculation to the contrary, there is so far no evidence that the Church of Scientology plans to establish a huge presence in virtual world Second Life. No secret deals for vast tracts of First Land have been revealed either by the Church or Second Life purveyor Linden Lab. Reports of a massive outreach initiative, involving dozens and eventually hundreds of customized avatars controlled in shifts by Church personnel and sent on conversion missions throughout Second Life, are also unconfirmed. The technology to translate a Scientologist HP scandal postscript: Moaning for the lash
James B. Stewart's long New Yorker article on the Hewlettt-Packard board-surveillance scandal is, of course, not online. However, you deserve least one juicy nugget: the contretemps between spymistress HP chairman Patricia Dunn and powerful board member Tom Perkins regarding Perkins's "novel" Sex and the Single Zillionaire -- now in John Battelle's finger photo
Dan Fost at the San Francisco Chronicle at last discovers the provenance of this legendary pic of Federated Media's John Battelle. Turns out that the photo originally emanated -- like so much in tech news -- from the machinations of John Dvorak. It dates from Battelle's Industry Standard days, taken by Dvorak during one of Battelle's infamous "money-wasting Friday parties." Dvorak photoshopped the pic to look like black-and-white film, gave it the Google buys Adscape Media for $23 million
As rumored, Google will be purchasing in-game advertising startup Adscape Media for $23 million. While this is widely interpreted as further evidence of Google's plans for a Second Life-style virtual world of its own, it's more likely another case of Google's mania for blazing new trails in automated online ad placement. The sprawlingSponsors understand our natural language
These sponsors understand us without the need for clumsy Boolean operators:
30 Second Software
Blackberry Pearl
Casio
Earthlink
Sprint
Verizon
If you know the difference between "books for children" and "books by children," consider advertising on Valleywag.
If you know the difference between "books for children" and "books by children," consider advertising on Valleywag.
X Prize goes for VC dollah
On March 3, the X Prize Foundation -- they of the rocket plane -- will have a fund-raiser at Google to announce the next phase of their entrepreneurial carnival. The event aims to scare up $50 million to operate the foundation, but it's also designed to seduce venture capitalists into funding future X Prizes. Details are murky as to how this might work, though allusions are made to chances at equity stakes in successful prize-winners in various technological fields. SomeBeing Sergey Brin
Jewish culture mag Moment runs a long profile of Sergey Brin, focusing particularly on early life and the Brin family's emigration from Moscow when Sergey was six. Much and possibly all of the info has been around the block a few times, though not often all collected in one place. Most singular is a penultimate section that begins "Does any company founded by two Jews, no matter how assimilated, necessarily retain some defining Jewish characteristics?"The Google masterminds' pencha
Hot or Notters at loggerheads?
A tipster writers in with goss on potential rumblings within the cerebral confines of Hot or Not:inside scoop is that Hong and the other guy are having problems, can't agree on the direction of the company. Hong wants to take it much further, make it a friendster/myspace thing and throw everything in such as video, blogs, the whole 9. Engineers are leaving and new ones are hard to come by. They may just sell it if they can't work it out in the next 30 days.Poor Jim Young, always "the other guy" to James Hong. Though normally we
Twingly blog-globe world-reader
One of prettiest useless things seen I've seen in awhile: the Twingly screensaver, via Biz Stone. Pulls in blog RSS feeds from all over the world, showing them accumulate in pillars on an elegantly rotating 3D globe. Post titles scroll by; click on any title to display the post and have the globe flip to the blog's physical location. And of course you can zoom and rotate around the blog-globe like the crazy spaceman you are. Minutes of fun.Jeff Bezos getting into Powerset?
Bambi Franciso reportulates that Amazon's Jeff Bezos is considering a personal investment in much-hyped natural-language search engine Powerset. It's been widely reported that Powerset planned to use Amazon computing resources, but this would be an unusual vote of confidence from Bezos. Unless he really is just looking for a new toy.Naked jogger inspires headline writers
The choices range from "Naked South Bay Jogger Comes Clean" to "Nude jogger's jiggles end with a fine and an apology." Scientific Atlanta engineer (and proud patent holder) Darryl Delacruz has been identified as the Naked Jogger of Cupertino. Alternately described as "fleshy" and "not in very good physical shape," Delacruz also purportedly owns a Who is Gus the Gopher?
In the midst of this week's serious-minded and notably glitz-free pitch to advertisers, Yahoo debuted a strange and worrisome creature -- "Gus the Gopher," a CGI rodent in a purple Yahoo sweater that demonstrated how to use Yahoo's mobile offerings. Gus apparently has no relation to the eponymous gopher of Two Ton Baker fame, and it's unclear why he was trotted out durMogulspeak: Who would you hire?
A perennial trope of mogul types -- actual and aspiring -- is praise by way of offer to hire. You see this a lot when one exec is asked about another whom he or she admires. Typically, Exec A sings the praises of Exec B, and as a capper, proudly claims that he or she would gladly hire Exec B, given the chance. On the face of it, a nice gesture; in reality, a rhetorical move that both absorbs and diminishes the status of the supposedly praised Exec B.For example, Jason Calacanis is fond of this maneuver (e.g.
Gmail in four interminable acts
Yes, Gmail is now open to all comers -- invitations not required. You can even get it if you're unfortunate enough to live in "a swath of Asian and South American countries where the Mountain View-based company previously limited the number of users." That's no reason to create a promotional clip that's among the most inane things ever posted to Youtube, which
Pillow fight needs larger pillows, more fighting
All complaints I have -- and there are many -- about urban pillowfighting boil down to the terminal cuteness of the whole affair. Laughing Squid has all the pics and links to last night's cushy conflagration at Justin Herman Plaza, including a video clip that shows a crowd of hipsters delicately bopping each other with barely any bloodlust. Dilettantes. We had more dangerous pillow fights in my parents' basement at the age of ten, and if anyone had called us a "flash mob," they would have gotten a mouthful of foam-packedSteve Swad out at AOL
CFO and exec VP Steve Swad has quit AOL to "pursue an opportunity in the growing private-equity field." Swad came up in 2003 from Turner Broadcasting. He survived the recent AOL purges, but sadly, has not -- as far as we can tell -- posted any beefcake photos. No word yet on Swad's specific plans or his AOL replacement. Memo after the
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